


jury (in my head)

by blueskypenguin



Category: Marvel (Movies), The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, M/M, Post-Movie(s), Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-11-07
Updated: 2012-11-07
Packaged: 2017-11-18 04:45:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 14,366
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/557045
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blueskypenguin/pseuds/blueskypenguin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Phil made it through, and the team which came together have stayed together, but it's not all sunshine and daisies for the Avengers post-battle. Clint is resisting a return to duty, doesn't sleep and maybe worst of all, he's avoiding Phil; and there's only so much of that Phil is willing to put up with.</p>
            </blockquote>





	jury (in my head)

**Author's Note:**

> Title from Amanda Palmer's _Have to Drive_. Written as part of the Marvel Big Bang on LJ!

As he blacks out ( _dies_ , he thinks, _I’m dying_ ) the last thing he sees is Fury's usually inscrutable face - determined, concerned, _proud_.

As exits go, Phil is damn satisfied with this one.

 

 

-

 

By the time he regains some semblance of self-aware consciousness - _Helicarrier infirmary, isolation room, almost certainly airborne and with a distant whine in the engines suggesting trouble afoot_ \- it seems as though it's all over.

He supposes a stab wound to the chest takes a while to deal with on an average day, not least when the entire world is under threat. There are, of course, priorities. He's still rather surprised to be awake at all.

He believes in gods, but miracles are far-fetched.

His chest hurts and all he can take are shallow breaths, but he can think clearly and he isn't dead. That’s something.

What isn't a surprise is that his eyelids are already starting to droop, and he's being tugged back under by whatever is flowing through the IV he can feel distantly in his hand. His blinks, seeing an improperly closed air-vent above him, then his eyes are closed and he sleeps.

 

-

 

The air-vent is closed.

He turns his head to see the heart-monitor which should be by his side and watches the strong, steady beat of spikes. His blood pressure is low, but not so much as to be dangerous while he's still lying down. He was prone to lower blood pressure anyway - Phil is of the opinion that it may be an asset in this job.

_Job. Helicarrier. Loki and the Tesseract._

He dimly remembers the engines sounding _off_ ; they're humming away happily now. Enough time has passed to have fixed whatever had gone wrong.

He has no idea how long that may be.

The screen showing his vitals tells him that it's nearly oh-four-hundred but that's not exactly helpful at this juncture. He makes a mental note (one he’s not convinced he’ll remember) to ask the medical staff to change the format on the time-stamp. A date to put with that 0400 would be helpful.

There's a click and hiss, and Phil watches the release of clear liquid into his IV. He tracks the movement of the drug cocktail up the tubing and into his arm, and waits for the pull of sleep.

There's no-one at the window, the door is closed, but Phil sees the security camera in the corner of the room and wonders who made it through all of this, who survived to be watching over him now. He hates being idle, but he'll sleep for the sake of the nagging chest wound.

It's a compromise.

_Compromised._

-

 

He slips through the haze and knows he’s not alone this time. He swallows – wonders when the doctors removed his breathing tube, wonders how long it took to stabilise him, wonders if this means he’s out of the woods – and turns his gaze slowly.

Natasha.

She’s watching him, as expressive as she’ll allow herself to be with her lips pressed together and her eyes catching the light with a shine. He sees her fingers twitch and thinks it must have been bad if she’s almost reaching out to him. “Hi,” she whispers softly.

His mouth is too dry to respond but Natasha, perceptive as ever, is already reaching over to cooler of ice chips, sat beside a jug of water. The jug’s not full and there are two cups, one worried and bitten around the rim and one pristine; he knows it’s not Natasha’s work but won’t think further. Tasha holds some chips carefully against Phil’s mouth and he’s suddenly aware of how disgusting his own tongue feels, wishing for some of the water and trying to clear his throat without coughing; his chest is down to aching as a dull throb but he’s not keen on jarring anything.

“Thanks, Tasha,” his own voice is low and hoarse but it draws a real smile from Natasha. He has so many questions, wants a status report, but doesn’t know where to begin. He supposes it would help to get the lay of the land for now, and details later, so asks, “How long?”

“Twelve days, it’s a little after thirteen-hundred. You were in a medically induced coma for six days, and you’ve been in and out of consciousness for three,” Natasha never pretends to misunderstand him. It’s as refreshing as it is helpful. “Situation was resolved within one.”

He nods. If he’s been in and out, he certainly doesn’t remember it all, but the antibiotics, painkillers (and who knows what else) that the doctors are pushing into his bloodstream at regular intervals are almost certainly leading to some less lucid moments.

“Loki punctured a lung and miraculously missed your heart,” she delivers this so plainly, but her knuckles are white with the force of her clenched fists. “The doctor has informed us that you had a lucky escape and with some time to heal, you ought to make a full recovery.”

 _All hail SHIELD medical advancements_ , Phil thinks tiredly. He knows there’s something tugging at him, some clarification he needs of the word ‘resolved’, but he can feel that he’s about to go under again and only manages to enquire, “SITREP?”

Natasha shakes her head, “You’re about to pass out again, sir.”

“Hmm,” he agrees, and drifts off. He thinks he hears the door open, but is out before anyone speaks.

 

-

 

Again, not alone.

Twelve days, and he’s turned his head while sleeping – his blood pressure is up a little, his heartbeat is still going strong and it’s only been a few hours since he last woke. ‘Maybe I can last more than a few minutes this time,’ he hopes.

There’s a rustling of paper, a page being turned; he turns, expecting Natasha to still be here.

Captain Rogers has taken her place in a chair closest to the bed (four seats in total, mismatched hospital and office chairs, obviously scavenged from around the infirmary) and he’s reading a high-school history textbook. Phil swallows drily, unsure of what to do – (part of him is freaking out over Captain America reading a book by his bedside, _his_ bedside, _his_ of all people!) – and Rogers looks up.

“Oh,” he says and sets his book aside, reaching over for the water. “I didn’t expect you to wake up again so soon.”

After a few soothing sips, Phil finds his voice, “Don’t seem to have much control over that.”

Rogers smiles, “You aren’t doing too badly. Natasha says you’re waking up every six hours or so but still only for a few minutes.”

“I... I don’t remember-”

Interrupting sheepishly, Rogers adds, “You’ve been, um, a little out of it a few times. They’ve got you on some strong painkillers.”

“Stab wounds tend to require them,” Phil replies blandly, and thinks he must be feeling better. Still, Rogers winces and then Phil just feels like a bastard for making light of a near-death experience around a man who has lost so many people in his life.

Not that Phil would ever presume to count himself among the people that are worth a great deal to Captain America, it’s just... you know. Principle.

Rogers is flushing and Phil thinks he might have said all of that out loud. “Uh, sorry.”

“Don’t worry about it. You should have heard the things you were saying to Stark.”

“I’ll pass,” Phil nods surely. Tony Stark is exceptionally infuriating to say the least, but Iron Man and Stark’s accomplishments since Afghanistan are outstanding in a way Phil wishes he wasn’t impressed by.

He drinks a few more sips of water and enjoys a few moments of comfortable silence with his childhood hero before he slips back under.

Four chairs. It doesn’t add up.

 

-

 

He starts waking up more frequently and for longer, and the doctors are confident enough in his recovery to start dialling back the pain relief which keeps dragging him back under. His stitches are almost ready to come out, but his lungs still ache with a moderately deep breath and his ribs are no better; sitting up feels like climbing a mountain.

More often than not, one of the Initiative is in the room with him; Natasha most often, when he wakes in the early hours of the morning, Rogers sees him through breakfast. Phil gets a hit of opiate-based relief around ten-hundred which tends to knock him for six, so he’s usually sleeping or just coming out of it when Dr. Banner is around in the afternoon. Stark seems to show up in the early evening and suspiciously just in time for Phil’s late dose.

All (four, four, only _four_ ) of them say nothing of the actual events they partook in to prevent invasion, and details are avoided with stubborn efficacy.

He wishes they’d been this unanimous and coherent to begin with, as it would certainly have saved him some headaches.

Worst of all, Phil can’t work out what the fuck is going on with his ceiling panels. He’d swear they were moving, but then again he could swear he saw Minnie Mouse (who looked remarkably like Darcy Lewis from the Hammer incident in New Mexico) stop by with paperwork for Rogers earlier on, so he’s not going to trust his doped-up vision any time soon. Still, the one with the darker pale blue fleck three inches from the left corner has _definitely_ been in three different positions and keeps rotating.

Mentions are made of switching him off the IV, transferring him to a ground-level hospital or even the almost-completely-refurbished Stark-or-possibly-Avengers Tower, but as ever more observation is required. Phil would just like to screw up the courage to ask the one question nagging in his mind, growing stronger daily until he’s half convinced he’s going to end up screaming it in Rogers’ face one day in what would become the single most embarrassing event of his life.

Once he proves, sixteen days after his ‘initial trauma’, that he can handle the burning ache of pain and stay awake for hours at a time, his visiting contingent start offering answers. There’s only ever one of them at a time, and details are offered sparingly.

 _Loki was taken back to Asgard_ , Rogers tells him, _by Thor himself. The Tesseract went with them and good riddance to it._

 _Stark was almost trapped on the wrong side of the invading force’s wormhole,_ Natasha tells him, and he can see in her tense shoulders just how close a call it was. _He diverted a WSC nuke. As a positive, evidence now shows that the Hulk is more effective than CPR._

 _An army came through, Stark tells him. They were called the Chitauri and let me tell you, the SHIELD xenobiologists are having spontaneous orgasms over the data. Meanwhile, Fury’s having spontaneous heart attacks over the property damage across Manhattan._ “Oh,” Tony adds, in a show of uncomfortable compassion, as he taps his arc reactor almost absently, “Sorry. No heart jokes in this room.”

Phil is strangely touched.

He gathers details, hoards them and fits them together, but it’s not until day twenty-one that someone mentions Clint, and it’s so offhand that Phil can’t measure his response carefully enough – his agonising intake of breath and momentarily spiked heart-rate make Natasha frown.

“I told you the situation had been resolved,” she states, uncertainty not sitting happily on her words. “I thought you realised – I know he’s been here.”

“I... I haven’t seen him,” he admits, and he could be lying. He sits back against the pillows – the doctors had finally let him start sitting up properly yesterday – and fists the bed sheets in his hands.

Natasha’s eyes flick upwards and Phil gets it – the magically moving ceiling panels and the air-vent that opens and closes at will. Of course Clint wouldn’t care about breaking the seal on an isolation room, especially when the occupant was in there for privacy’s sake and not contagious.

“I see,” he says. He raises an eyebrow and repeats her upward glance. _Is he up there now?_

She shakes her head. “He left with Stark. He’s offering to design Clint a new bow.”

Phil smiles and rolls his eyes, relief bubbling through him. “So... fill me in.”

Natasha evaluates him for a moment before enlightening him. “He was part of the strike force, the distraction Loki arranged to get free and scatter the rest of us. He succeeded – Dr. Banner and Thor ended up on the ground; Stark, Captain Rogers and I up here. I knocked Clint out,” she says simply, “And he woke up as himself. There may have been some hair-pulling.”

He knows it probably wasn’t that simple, but he doesn’t want to pry too hard. He’s sure that whatever it took to reverse Loki’s influence, they’ve squared that away between themselves.

“And the ghostly act?”

“Well,” she shrugs and leans back in her chair, an act of nonchalance neither of them believe, “You know Clint prefers to see things from a distance.”

 

-

 

He and Natasha spend a little while longer talking, until she excuses herself around oh-five-thirty and he settles down to sleep a little more.

Twenty minutes later, when Phil is sick of staring at the empty observation window as he tries to find a more comfortable spot on the bed, he lets his eyes slip closed and decides to give Clint the space he’s clearly seeking.

 

-

 

The doctor stops by at oh-nine-thirty on day twenty-three and informs him that he’s being released on the condition that he does no work, takes all medication as instructed and agrees to stay under the observation and care of the Avengers at the newly eponymous Tower.

“What’s the alternative?” He asks, because living in the same building as Stark is not Phil’s idea of a restful, recuperating environment the doctor seems to think, but he is crawling the walls here.

The doctor shrugs, “We keep you here. You won’t be cleared for light duty until you’ve rested and taken a physical. The blade sliced clean through muscle, and you had a punctured lung and several broken ribs.” Whatever Loki’s staff had been made from, it was capable of sliding through human bone as if it were warm butter.

Phil sighs. He’s really sick of this little room, and the doctors haven’t let him walk further than the bathroom down the hall. At least at the Avengers Tower he’ll have a bit of freedom. “So what’s the agenda on this, then?”

“I’ve booked you in for a physical in a month’s time. You’ve always been a quick healer. If you pass the preliminary, you can go back to light duty – but no field work and no time on the range or anything strenuous in the gym. It’s going to be a while before your ribs can take that kind of action.”

He’s had broken ribs before – admittedly none broken so cleanly – so he knows the drill. “Okay. Where do I sign?”

Doctor Jenkins smiles, “I’ll send someone in with the paperwork in a few minutes, Agent Coulson.”

Either Fury fancied a career change, or a startled nurse had a chart unceremoniously removed from her hands; it’s the first time he’d stopped by to see Phil and he brings the discharge papers and a pen. “I hope you don’t expect to be wrangling the Avengers before you’re fighting fit, Coulson.”

“I’ll at least try to co-ordinate from the couch, sir,” Phil replies, because they both know he’s not very good at bed-rest. Or vacation.

Fury takes the chart from Phil and nods in satisfaction. “So it would seem all our little rag-tag crew of misfit toys needed to put aside their differences was someone to avenge – go figure,” Fury doesn’t smirk but Phil knows both sides of a poker face enough to know that Fury wants to. “Thor is off-world for the foreseeable, but Dr. Foster is coming back in an official capacity and will be working with all our resources at our disposal.”

This was the kind of SITREP Phil was waiting for. He nods and Fury continues.

“I’m giving you an assistant.”

Phil wishes he hadn’t continued. “Sir, I don’t-”

“Non-negotiable, Coulson,” Fury really does smirk this time. “We both know you’re going to get straight back to work in whatever way you can, so this is the compromise. Ms. Lewis was read in after New Mexico and is qualified.”

Darcy Lewis. Maybe Phil wasn’t _completely_ hallucinating Minnie Mouse last week after all. She was certainly a firecracker, probably crazy enough to deal with the Avengers, and the background they had on her indicated she was intelligent and capable. “If she doesn’t work out, I reserve the right to fire her.”

“She’ll work out,” Fury replies, which is his veiled way of saying _no, you don’t reserve that right._ “Ms. Lewis will be at Stark Tower at eleven-hundred tomorrow to get you up to speed.”

“Sir. Anything else I need to be aware of?”

“Agent Romanoff is on stand-down while this mess gets sorted out. SHIELD will have a permanent presence in several levels of the Avengers Tower, including lab and office space; Agent Hill is co-ordinating that. All six of the Avengers will have permanent residence in the Tower – Stark had his construction guys work flat out on refurbishment.” Fury scoffs, but it has a tinge of grudging respect, “That damn bastard is paying the construction workers triple to fix the damage throughout Manhattan as fast as possible, and he’s convinced a few other _billionaire philanthropists_ to pitch in to the rebuild fund.”

“That’s... startlingly generous, sir.”

“I’ve been warned that it’s not a precedent,” Fury growls. “We’re going to need a budget to deal with this kind of aftermath.”

“I’ll speak to-”

Fury shakes his head. “Not your responsibility. You just concentrate on taking it easy for a couple of months and make sure the Avengers are on the same page.”

“Mutually exclusive goals, sir,” Phil rolls his eyes, but this is his job and he’ll find a way to make it work - even if he has to use his new _assistant_ to get it done.

The director almost smiles. “This is a brave new world, Coulson, haven’t you heard? Six impossible people before breakfast.”

“Yes, sir. Anything else I need to be aware of?”

Fury walks towards the door, “Nothing pressing. Oh, and Phil?” Fury turns and levels Phil with a piercing gaze. “Deal with Barton. He’s frightening people more than usual. Don’t make me repeat myself, it was fucking disturbing enough the first time.”

Phil swallows and nods, not trusting his own voice. This is clearly satisfactory enough a response because a moment later, he’s alone again and trying not to remember the uncomfortable day six months ago when Director Nick Fury, Agent of SHIELD gave him _relationship advice._

 

-

 

Three hours after his discharge papers were hand-delivered to his doctor by his director, Phil was being handed a set of clothes by Captain Rogers. “When you’re ready, Natasha’s got a ‘jet to take us straight to the Tower. Stark’s put a landing pad on the roof,” Rogers rolls his eyes even while he smiles. “I’ll wait outside.”

The door closes and Phil slides out of bed. The t-shirt and sweatpants are his, taken from his room on-board the Helicarrier along with a pair of his own underwear, socks and sneakers. He manages to pull the underwear and sweats on despite the uncomfortable pull of his left shoulder as his muscles shift. He sits on the bed to put on the socks and slide his feet into his training shoes, tying the laces off quickly. The t-shirt is more of a challenge, but Phil’s acquainted with a few gunshot wounds in his shoulder and has a few tricks to avoid injuring himself further.

He’s a little out of breath by the time he’s dressed, but he takes a moment to calm down, take his last sip of hospital water, and look at the air-vent.

They’ve been in place and unmoved for a week, and he suspects Clint may not have returned after leaving the Helicarrier with Stark under the lure of a new piece of custom-made equipment.

Phil opens the door to find Rogers leaning against the wall opposite. “Ready,” he adds, as if standing there dressed and eager to leave isn’t clue enough. Phil’s conceded that he isn’t exactly in control of what his mouth does around Captain Rogers, which is just mortifying, but his childhood hero takes it with grace. He supposes the Vicodin he’s been provided is as good an excuse as any for some embarrassing word-vomit.

The walk to the glider bay isn’t far, but it’s further than Phil has had to walk in over three weeks and it takes its toll. By the time he’s sat in the back of the glider, Natasha making the ride as smooth as possible, his ribs ache, his lungs can’t seem to get the right amount of air and he’s sweating through his shirt.

It’s better than resorting to a wheelchair, but damn if he isn’t exhausted.

The Helicarrier is clearly airborne somewhere off the Eastern seaboard, and the fifteen minutes it takes for them to reach Manhattan is enough for Phil to get his breath back. He steps up to Natasha and Rogers in the glider cockpit to get a look at the island, unsure what to expect considering the scale of the attack as he understands it.

There seems to be scaffolding _everywhere_. There are stretches of several blocks cordoned off – swept clean but markedly empty. Natasha takes them lower and he sees the pad Stark has marked out for use – and he sees he has a welcoming party.

He sits back down for the landing, and follows Rogers out to find Stark, Dr. Banner, and Clint waiting for him.

Clint looks like he’d rather be anywhere else than on this roof at this very moment.

It’s not quite the welcome Phil had been hoping for.

But Stark is grinning, Banner is smiling, and Phil has no idea what he did to endear himself to this rag-tag group of heroes he’s tasked with, well, keeping _on task_.

He has an unfortunate feeling that what he did was _get stabbed_.

“Phil! Should you be walking? You’re looking a little pale there,” Stark fusses over him as he ushers everyone inside, through a hangar and into a large elevator, “Seriously, I’m worried for your blood pressure more than usual. I’ve sullied my TiVo with your ridiculous shows, well actually that was Pepper, well more accurately it was Cl-”

“I get the picture, Stark,” Phil cuts him off as Rogers sighs and pushes one of the buttons; there are a dozen of them, apparently one for each of the Avengers’ only floors, and each with a number after a stylised _A_. Phil wonders if there’s a tourist map available. “And appreciate it.” It’s something of a wrench to be indebted to Tony Stark but under the circumstances, he’ll live with it.

He’ll live, period, which is sort of the point.

As Stark continues to babble, he’s hyper-aware of Clint in the corner; Clint who suggested to Pepper that he might want some terrible television while he heals, Clint who won’t look at him and is trying to make himself invisible. The doors of the elevator are mirrored and he can see – without making it obvious that he’s looking at all – that Clint is staring at the floor in an unusual show of ...something.

He can’t get a read on Clint at all, and that’s almost unheard of nowadays.

So when they leave the elevator and show Phil to the sofa in the spacious and comfortable living room on the residential floor for the Avengers team, it isn’t surprising that Clint completely disappears.

 

-

 

Natasha fixes a pot of tea and a cafetiere of coffee, and everyone (sans Clint) settles in for what proves to be an epic, vivid and undoubtedly highly exaggerated version of events. The tale begins with the closing moments of the Helicarrier incursion – the team scattered, Clint unconscious but himself, and Phil’s moment of self-sacrifice in the face of a god with a few pithy words for rallying the troops.

It appears that Phil was right, that his acquaintance with the business end of Loki’s staff is what set the ball rolling, and Phil’s never felt so humbled.

He makes all the right noises, nods in the appropriate places and asks for details when he wants them. He didn’t really need to know about the eating competition Thor and Rogers – “Call me Steve, please,” Rogers had said, and Phil wants to know how this became his life because he’s half convinced eight-year-old Philip Coulson is asleep and having the best dream ever, and maybe he’s still a little doped up –

He loses his train of thought, and the exertion of moving from Helicarrier to the Tower is catching up with him. Natasha is the first to notice, as ever, and suggests she could show him to his room. Tony takes this as permission for a very quick tour, pointing out everyone’s room on the way to Phil’s and raving about the en suite bathrooms and how JARVIS can have your coffee ready by the time you walk from your bed to the kitchen.

They leave him to it, reiterating how good it is to have him here and offering their help if he should need anything at all. Natasha gives him a pointed look before she turns away, but it could mean anything at this juncture.

Except: it doesn’t escape Phil’s notice that his assigned bedroom is opposite Clint’s.

Neither does it escape his notice that the door is firmly shut, but there are low tones of some classical music drifting from inside.

A cello, Phil recognises, and tries not to laugh sadly.

 

-

 

He’s not surprised that the room is too big, that it’s more of a studio apartment than a guest room – he should’ve expected that from Stark. It’s the food he loves in the cupboards, the comfortable clothes he knows someone took from his own apartment, and a selection of his favoured books on the bedside table. He can’t hope it was Clint, not when officially speaking Clint doesn’t know where he lives, not when that’s completely unlike how they are. Phil’s money is on Pepper, and it twists in his no-longer-sucking chest wound.

It shouldn’t, but it does.

He sits gingerly on the bed. The early evening light is filtering through the large sheet-glass windows and Phil is so tired.

“JARVIS?”

“Yes, Agent Coulson?” The measured voice replies and Phil smiles faintly. He will never cease to be impressed by Stark’s accomplishments, even if the guy himself is a pain in the ass.

Phil toes off his sneakers and slides under the thin summer comforter. “Could you tint the windows, and wake me at oh-two-hundred?”

“Of course – and I’ve been asked to remind you to take your painkillers as and when you need them, and not, as I have been asked to repeat word for word, _‘only when it’s pointed out that your bloody arm’s off’_. Sir,” and JARVIS sounds a little apologetic for the borrowed phrasing.

Leaning against the sinfully comfortable pillows, Phil feels himself relax.

 

-

 

“Sir, it’s 2am.”

His chest is on fire and it’s radiating down every limb. It fucking hurts.

“A glass of water and your prescription have been left for you on the nightstand, Agent Coulson.”

Phil tries to pull himself up but the stitches are tugging and his arms are actually shaking. He tries to roll instead but _that’s a no-go, sarge_. He hears the door open, and the light from the hallway is blinding - Phil would wince if he weren’t gritting his teeth to bite back some humiliating sounds.

“Idiot,” Clint grumbles as he shuffles to the bed and slips a hand underneath Phil’s neck to tilt his head. His palm is cool and Phil can’t help but groan because it feels heavenly, but it disappears all too quickly as Clint uncaps the large pill bottle and shakes a couple of the white, chalky antibiotics out, followed by a smaller one of Vicodin. The balm of Clint’s hand then moves to the base of Phil’s skull.

A selection of pills is pressed into Phil’s palm and Phil slaps them haphazardly into his mouth. Clint holds the glass of water carefully to his lips and Phil takes a few sips to encourage the dry capsules down his drier throat as Clint’s thumb rubs distracting circles behind his ear. Phil knows that the fire dying in his chest so quickly is only psychosomatic.

All too soon, Clint pulls away with only the tiniest squeeze of his hand as a warning. “Like I said, you’re an idiot.”

Clint is gone and the door is firmly shut again before Phil has the opportunity to defend himself.

It takes Phil a while to get back to sleep.

He isn’t surprised when his oh-eight-hundred dose comes and goes without Clint making an appearance, and Phil makes do.

 

-

 

Phil dozes for a little after the morning dose, mindful of his meeting with Darcy at eleven-hundred and thankful the new prescription doesn’t knock him out quite as much as the old one on the Helicarrier. He listens for movement around the floor – listens for Clint – but it would seem the soundproofing is top-notch. Phil isn’t exactly surprised, knowing Stark.

He does wonder how Clint knew to come into his room in the early hours, though.

Or why he could hear the cello concerto through Clint’s door.

When he finally resolves to leave the bed, he curses his stiff limbs. It’s a boon that his stitches are out, that he’s only got knitting bone to worry about, because at least it means a proper shower.

His first since _before_.

Phil stands and feels his head swim a little, but it passes soon enough and as he walks toward the bathroom he’s aware of how _hungry_ he is. It feels surprisingly normal, and if not for the surroundings, it could be interchangeable with any post-mission come-down.

He strips, rueful but appreciative of his many experiences of dealing with an injured shoulder (strange to appreciate that otherwise clusterfuck of a mission in Prievizda), and turns the heat and pressure up on the walk-in shower big enough for three quarterbacks and then some. He lets the steam build up and watches his reflection fog over, obscuring his tired face and the red-raised, forming scar that runs for five painful inches down from his collarbone. He looks terrible, looks his age, looks like he was run through and left to die but somehow made it out the other side.

Fancy that, he thinks wryly as he finally steps under the spray.

He decides then and there that he might never leave this shower.

The groan he lets out under the spray is positively obscene, he knows, but it’s not like there’s anyone around to hear it. He would defy anyone not to do the same, under the circumstances. He feels his tense muscles unclench a little under the warm bombardment as he presses his palms against the wall in front of him and lets the jet pummel his shoulders.

The immediate problem becomes soap, or any form of shower gel, to start cleaning the accumulated grime from his skin. He knows it’s psychological – he would have had sponge baths while unconscious and once awake he managed best he could with the ward sink and what little privacy he could get – but nothing compares to stepping clean from the shower with a fresh towel. Phil’s had to make do in deserts, tundra and rainforests and he doesn’t squander creature comforts when he’s got them to hand.

There’s only smooth tile to be seen in the shower, and while the water is all well and good... “Uh, JARVIS?”

“If you press your hand to the patterned tile on your left, sir,” JARVIS replies promptly, and Phil realises that there may be more to the sporadic, abstract spiral pattern adorning certain tiles when it slides open towards him, revealing a metal basket full of toiletries.

“Thank you, JARVIS,” Phil says to the ceiling, for lack of a better focus, and rifles through the bottles provided.

Phil decides that he and Stark need to have a little talk about boundaries, a Tazering included. He can live with being supplied with his usual Head and Shoulders shampoo, and a bottle of a sandalwood-scented shower gel is good, if not something he’d usually pick for himself; he draws the line at the silicon-based lube.

That doesn’t mean he’ll be moving it though – water does not a good lubricant make for shower sex.

Not that he’s expecting anything like that right now, Phil sighs.

A quick inspection of the other delights behind the patterned tiles finds some cleaning products for the shower itself, a loofah and sponge, and another tray completely empty. He pulls the sandalwood gel and the sponge from the respective trays and pushes on the tiles, sealing the compartments away.

He sets about scrubbing himself clean, going slowly and gently over the puckered and tender skin on his chest and back.

Perhaps he made it to heaven after all.

 

-

  

He finds a new toothbrush and fresh tube of toothpaste in another panel by the sink - same brands as his own and so _someone_ will be getting an education on appropriate use of credit card records and the legal ramifications of hacking - and redresses in clean sweatpants and a t-shirt. The process is only marginally easier than the day before.

With Darcy due in twenty minutes, he now has to decide whether to eat breakfast alone from the food in his mini-kitchen, or venture out and deal with the Avengers who live here.

After three weeks of one-visitor at a time Phil’s willing to brave the other inmates of Avengers Tower in order to suffer through whatever poor excuse for breakfast foods Stark has in his kitchen. Phil really hopes someone else has taken control of the grocery shopping, because 99% of the time Stark runs only on caffeine and take-out.

Clint’s closed door is anti-climactic at best, and the same could be said of the near-silence. It’s late morning and the five current residents aren’t known for their abundance of sleep or over-fondness of laziness.

Phil isn’t either, but he has a medicinal excuse.

He walks at a comfortable pace, back-tracing his steps from yesterday evening and eventually towards voices.

He rounds the corner to the vast area that is the open-plan living space to be faced with Stark and Rogers bickering over the breakfast counter while Natasha watches from the dining table. Her expression would imply boredom to most people, but her posture is relaxed and she isn’t in any hurry with the salad in front of her. Natasha is, despite appearances, amused. She turns her head to Phil and winks before looking back over her two childish team-mates, who seem to be fighting over... strawberry Pop Tarts.

Pop Tarts. Phil wishes he couldn’t believe it, but he does. He absolutely does, because it was clear from the first moment they met that Rogers and Stark could find anything to argue about and would go at it with gusto.

Just as he decides he should’ve stayed for breakfast in his own room and be spared refereeing duties, Stark turns on the spot to point at him, brandishing a spatula pointedly. “Phil, just the man. Come over here and settle an argument without automatically siding with your childhood hero, if you please?”

Phil is baffled.

Rogers turns and shrugs, waving his hand towards Stark. “It’s really your decision, I was just trying to make a _suggestion_.” He turns back to shoot a very pointed glare at the grinning man.

“Yes, and it was _boring_ ,” Stark needles and mimics Steve’s pointed tone, but there doesn’t seem to be quite so much heat in it as there was when Phil last saw them interact, three weeks ago. “Now Phil, this is vitally important: what do you want in your pancakes? Fruit,” Stark pulls an exaggerated frown, “Or chocolate chips?” He nods like a bobble-headed doll in an earthquake.

It’s an hilarious reminder of an episode of Doctor Who, and the amusement battles his sentimentality; he’d been prepared to fix himself some toast or something, and so he’s surprised enough by the offer to want to duck his head and smile. Just to be a deflective jackass, he asks, “Raspberries and white chocolate?”

Stark straightens and Phil sees Rogers’ mouth twitch out of the corner of his eye.

He reckons he won’t be able to the play the ‘I almost died to save the world so be nice to me’ card for very long.

“Well played, Agent. Well played,” Stark crosses to the fridge, humming thoughtfully as his eyes flit between the shelves. He pulls back with a box of raspberries in his hand. “Go! Sit! I am going to make breakfast.”

JARVIS’ voice interrupts, ever polite and yet perfectly chastising, “Sir, do you really think that’s-”

“Yeah, no,” Natasha appears from behind Phil. “I’m sure Coulson would prefer an edible breakfast.”

Rogers is shaking his head with a rueful smile he’s failing to hide; Natasha is effortlessly taking the spatula from Stark’s hand, who looks disgruntled but resigned and not a little afraid; and Phil is really, very glad to be alive.

“On that note,” Rogers gives an awkward shrug, smile twisting into something more embarrassed, “I’ve already eaten and I’ve got to... a thing that I... a _meeting_ , so. Phil, I’m glad you’re up and about.”

Phil nods - wow, he hopes he gets over this fanboy worship soon - and watches Stark watch Rogers walk away.

He wants to groan. He should have seen it coming, and it’s going to get messy; he just knows it.

...The same way he’d known he and Clint would be messy. Uncontrollable. Dangerous. They’d agreed on that point.

Stark makes noises about being superfluous in his own kitchen, but he’s already distracted from the Operation: Breakfast now that he’s lost his main audience member.

Rolling her eyes, Natasha shoos him away with silent promises of bodily harm. “You have more important things to be doing than griping at me, Stark,” she says sweetly, and Phil takes a very different kind of pleasure in watching Stark walk away.

Natasha pours batter into the pan deftly. “They’re going to be-”

“Messy, yes,” he raises an eyebrow.

She just smirks, “Because you have room to talk.”

“Could we just _not go there_ for a little while longer, Tasha?” He turns his best puppy-dog eyes out as if they would make a difference to the Black Widow. “Please?”

She points at the dining table, pursing her lips, and by the time he’s carefully slid off the breakfast bar stool and sat down in place, she’s turned out a perfect stack of pancakes. “I will leave it for now,” she agrees as she sets down the plate, “But if I have to put up with this for much longer, I promise you bodies will start to drop.”

Natasha turns and leaves, and if he were a less experienced man he’d take her warning as a joke. Instead he tucks into his first non-hospital breakfast in three weeks, and his first proper pancake stack in probably as many years.

They are inappropriately good, and if he hadn’t watched Natasha burn cakes, cookies and anything require _baking_ , he’d wonder if there was anything she couldn’t do. He loads up another mouthful of pancake with a soft, perfectly ripe, blushing raspberry and takes his time savouring something with actual flavour.

He and Clint aren’t friends, and haven’t been for almost seven years now. They hadn’t been friends when Fury slapped down Clint’s file and said, “If he won’t work with you, he won’t work at all. Meet your new asset.”

They hadn’t been friends when not six weeks later, Phil entered the fray to forcibly extract Clint when he’d taken a bullet in the shin, fracturing bone and making a solo escape from his nest impossible.

And they definitely weren’t friends when they had been Coulson-and-Barton for eleven months and instead of obeying the order to terminate the Black Widow in Budapest, Clint had done something completely different.

They aren’t friends at all, but they’ve always been more than colleagues, more than simply handler and asset. They’d had to be, because every other handler had washed their hands of Clint and declared him impossible to work with before Fury had turned to Phil to fix it. He’d never treated Clint than anything less than a talented, exceptional operative with a specific skill set and a brain of his own. From day one, Phil has used not only Clint’s accuracy but also his expertise and experience, and never done Clint the disservice of sitting miles behind the lines calling the shots; from day one, they were in this together.

And when it was clear after two years that perhaps their interaction had the potential to be more than simply platonic, they’d dealt with that too. Clint had said it up-front, that it was all or nothing; Phil knew the ‘ _all_ ’ was playing with fire, and so they’d tabled the issue with no commitments or provisions.

The time wasn’t right, the job at hand was more important.

They continued to bleed together, plan together, and together they’ve had more brushes with death than they’ve had home-cooked dinners.

But not once in almost seven years has Clint ever reacted like _this._

Whatever _this_ was, it’s an unknown quantity and Phil hates incomplete intel as much as Clint hates imbalance in his bow.

With the exception of the strange 0200 incident, Clint hasn’t said a word to him since the morning he went on-shift, providing surveillance on the Tesseract; and this is how that story ends.

He takes a vicious bite of his pancakes and continues to focus on the way the artificial light in the kitchen plays across the dining table surface.

It’s not right. For a start, Clint is usually around when he wakes up post-injury, usually bitching about his temporary handler, bitching about also being shot but not getting the same cushy digs, bitching about anything at all. Clint is loud, distracting and thoroughly welcome when Phil is recuperating because hospitalisation sucks.

Phil rips at the pancakes and chews forcefully at another mouthful.

Clint was reacting to either his own ordeal with Loki, Phil’s ordeal with Loki, or both. Clint’s usual approach to emotional matters was to ignore the issue until it went away or to confront it head on, and fuck or fight it out. Since making their agreement (definitely in the _fight_ category of confrontation), he and Phil had been in what Fury had termed a ‘ _stalemate_ ’ in the conversation Phil had been doing very well suppressing until now, thank you very much.

Fury had put it down to Phil to break it; but with the Initiative on the verge of activation, he hadn’t wanted to complicate things, and all the original reasons for _not doing this_ still stood. (Part of Phil was sure it was doomed to failure, that it would only ever blow up in their faces.) And now Clint might have made the decision for him, he realises, in staying out of his way.

He last mouthful of pancakes are all but ground between Phil’s clenched teeth.

“God, what did the pancakes ever do to you, G-man?”

And he had an assistant to deal with.

He relaxes, swallows and sets down his cutlery carefully. He takes a deep breath and finds that part of him which is the façade of Agent Coulson, that bland and accepting calm, and meets Darcy’s eyes, “Miss. Lewis.”

Her eyes narrow, “That was really creepy. Did you just, like, turn off or activate a new set of protocols or something?” She picks up his plate, knife and fork and walks over to the kitchen to place them in the sink. She’s back within moments, and Phil blinks. “Seriously, are you a robot now?”

“The stab wound would say no,” and in the face of her effusive personality, reluctantly he smiles. On the inside. “Have a seat and get me up to speed.”

“Yes, boss,” she even salutes jauntily, but her office-appropriate attire is a startling contrast. He supposes it helps that she looks like his assistant, in a pencil skirted suit and heels, with a crisp white blouse. She hands him one of the two StarkPads in her hand as she unbuttons her blazer and slides into the seat opposite him. “You’ve got every incident, eye-witness, SHIELD and World Security Council report related to the events surrounding the Tesseract, plus the contributions from the other federal agencies. We can go through some of those now, or anytime later - they’re in subfolders by agency and can be ordered by date or the priority I’ve assigned them. Also, your SHIELD email is set-up on your Pad and your personal contacts and calendar have been transferred.”

“So this one’s mine, is it?” He raises an eyebrow and his tone is sarcastic, but he’s relaxing now that he has all the answers he needs at his fingertips.

Darcy nods with a grin, and despite the professional dress, he recognises the clever, annoying, brave student who’d stuck by her boss, bitched about her iPod and tased a God.

Perhaps this whole assistant thing won’t be too bad after all.

He decides to read through the actual reports later, and quickly affirms with JARVIS that he and Darcy can speak freely; the residential part of the Tower is empty but for them. “Alright, I’ll read the reports myself and I got a run down from the Team last night from their perspective -”

“I tried to get Thor to record his version of events in song, but he understandably had other priorities, what with actual factual Loki and all,” she rolls her eyes but doesn’t seem as put out as she’d like to pretend.

Phil bites his tongue because part of him really would like to hear Thor deliver a classic Viking-style epic poem on the battle, but he doesn’t want to encourage Darcy. “But,” he stresses, and his ‘ _don’t interrupt, Miss. Lewis_ ’ is heavily implied, even if she refuses to appear chastened “What do I need to know immediately that the Avengers won’t have been told?”

“The WSC are pissed about everything, from the Avengers apparently disbanding and going off the radar,” she waves a hand to indicate the very conspicuous Tower they happen to be in, “to Director Fury _allowing_ ,” and that got air-quotes, “Thor and Loki return to Asgard with the Tesseract. Not to mention the sheer amount of damage to New York, as if they hadn’t tried to _nuke_ it.”

“Not unexpected.”

Darcy might not be experienced with the many agencies SHIELD has to co-ordinate with, but apparently she’s had enough familiarity with the WSC since coming on-board; she sighs, “No. But they have heavily implied that they’ll be coming after Fury if he so much as puts a swish of coat out of line, and that puts the Avengers in the crosshairs of those bureaucrats.”

“Unfortunately, you’re right. What else?”

She shifts in her seat. “As the Avengers’ handler, you’re entitled to see psych’ eval summaries on each member of the team. The preliminary reports are on your Pad, and they all have mandatory monthly meetings with Dr. Ashliyani from now on. Each Avenger was asked about Thor, to garner an idea of the team dynamics for when he comes back; obviously there’s no personal eval for him but you have a summary based on observation and reactions from the rest of the team.” She takes a deep breath and Phil knows there’s something coming he’s really not going to like. “There’s a few things you should be aware of, Boss.”

He wonders where that nickname has come from, but Darcy seems the type to keep using it even if he asks her not to. Besides, it’s what he calls Fury, so he supposes there’s some nice trickle-down justice there. Shit always rolls down-hill, after all. He leans back in his chair, “Alright, give me the good news.”

“Stark is deemed to be an asset to the team, despite rocky beginnings, and his eleventh-hour stunt through the wormhole has put to rest some of the tension between him and Rogers,” she delivers the overview very matter-of-fact and in startling contrast to her interactions so far; Phil wonders if she’d rehearsed this part in her head before getting here. “Despite the incident on the Helicarrier, Dr. Banner still has much better control than expected, and his interactions with Stark suggest he’s finding a more even keel - not least because Stark keeps baiting him and yet the lab is still intact.”

Phil doesn’t catch the smile in time, his own control ironically smashed by exhaustion and medication, and Darcy points with an expression of exaggerated shock. “Malfunction!”

“Get on with it, Miss. Lewis,” he rolls his eyes, unwillingly amused. It’s nice to have someone other than Natasha and Clint willing to joke with him. Stark doesn’t count; Stark never counts.

“Until I see evidence, I still have my money on LMD,” she warns, but continues her relay of psych’ judgements. “Let’s see... Steve is adjusting, and while he was _quote_ ‘worryingly isolated’ before, he’s socialising with the Avengers and just left to see Peggy Carter. Though,” she smiles impishly, “You didn’t hear that from me.”

The meeting he’d shot off to before breakfast, Phil realises. “That one’s not public knowledge, then?”

“Well, it’s not Stark’s knowledge,” Darcy shrugs, “What with the whole history there with Stark’s father, I think Steve just doesn’t want it to get awkward.”

“Understandable. Give me the last two,” he orders pointedly. He was not going to get distracted with Stark’s daddy-drama.

“Natasha is Natasha. She didn’t appreciate having to beat Hawkeye up, and there is still the issue of being a spy on a combat team, but otherwise...” She links her fingers in front of her and meets Phil’s eyes steadily, “Natasha is Natasha.”

He knows exactly what she means: this is hardly a blip on Black Widow’s psychological radar.

“And Hawkeye?” There was no way he’d be let back on active duty, even with the Avengers, without serious psychological evaluation by SHIELD. Not considering the role he played in the sabotage of the Helicarrier.

Darcy’s expression becomes sympathetic and he wonders just what she thinks she knows about him and Clint.

But then, he’s always been a paranoid bastard.

“Hawkeye - Clint - is on probation while undergoing continued evaluation,” she says. “It was ruled that his actions prior to Natasha’s interference were out of his control, and his actions as part of the Avengers go a long way to exonerating him regardless. However, the effect of Loki’s...” She struggles to find the words.

“Mindfuck?” He offers, because it was the word he’d been using in the run-up to taking that Phase II gun from storage. “I was partial to the term ‘mindfuck’.”

Darcy smiles, “Didn’t know you had it in your programming, Boss.”

“Special subroutines,” Phil jokes, because he probably shouldn’t, because his primary asset is essentially benched until the shrinks are sure Clint isn’t going to go back under, or off the deep end.

Or, as it turns out, until _Clint_ is sure he isn’t going to go off the deep end.

“He doesn’t trust himself,” she summarises, and Phil has a feeling most of what she’d said prior to this moment had been quoted or paraphrased directly from the psychological evaluations themselves. “The shrinks want to certify him for re-entry into the field, but he’s resisting.”

“Is he field-ready, physically?”

She nods, a wordless affirmative that means Clint is worse off than he’d realised.

He’s suddenly aware that he’s been out of it for _three weeks_ and once that dawns on him, Phil feels a little like his skin is too tight, like he wants to scratch, fuck or fight the tension out of his bones. He gets a few muscle movements into a roll of his shoulders before he regrets it and bites back a hiss at the pain.

He’s restless and Clint was always worse at down-time than Phil; he can only imagine what must be going through the archer’s head if he’s resisting the field.

Clint has always been good at shooting his way through his problems.

“He’s on the range, isn’t he?” Phil guesses.

Once again, Darcy nods but she fills in the details quietly. “He barely sleeps, not that many people do around here, but even Steve and Stark are getting a few hours a night; Clint has been up all hours. They’ve heard him playing music, seen him in the living room reading, and JARVIS confessed they’ve been working on new bow and arrow prototypes. The shrinks prescribed him sleeping tablets, but-”

“He’d never take them, he never does,” Phil mutters.

“During the day, he’s barely more sociable,” Darcy is hitting her stride now and volume control is taking a back-seat. “Natasha was beating the crap out of him daily until she straight-up told him that he wasn’t giving her the courtesy of a fair fight and refused to spar with him until he’d hit her ‘like he meant it’ - that was last week. He’d taken to rattling around in the ventilation ducts until Stark and Dr. Banner pointed out that they frequently _and without warning_ vent the fumes of their experiments, so he had to stop that.”

By this point, Darcy’s arms are flailing as she tells the tale of Hawkeye’s alienation of his teammates with growing enthusiasm, “And he almost completely avoids Steve - Steve! - except to ask for input on the ‘ _aesthetic of the bow_ ’ or to recommend a book. I’ve had maybe two conversations with Hawkeye, both work-related, and,” she adds with a wag of her finger, “only after I made it clear that I was your assistant, not your replacement.”

She finally comes to the end of her little tirade, and Phil wonders how the professional Darcy he saw not five minutes ago and the Darcy he met last year can co-exist so happily in one person. “So yeah, Boss, he’s on the range.”

Phil’s usual approach when Clint is being a stubborn ass is similar to Natasha’s: beat him up and beat him down until he’s worked out enough pride to listen. It isn’t really an option right now. It also can’t be his priority; he has to get up to speed and back to work, because it’s only a matter of time before something crawls out of the woodwork to challenge the Avengers in the wake of the Invasion.

He rubs his hand over his cheeks and wishes he’d taken the time to shave. “Alright, I’ll deal with that later. Get me up to speed, Miss. Lewis.”

 

-

 

By the time JARVIS warns them that the elevator is approaching this floor - and that if there was any sensitive material in what they were discussing that they would do well to change the subject swiftly - it was almost three in the afternoon. They’d relocated to the sofas when it became clear that the dining chairs weren’t exactly chosen for _comfort_ , and Darcy had been making semi-frequent coffee runs back to the kitchen. Phil stretches and is glad that the living area is more relaxation-friendly.

Darcy has long since kicked off her shoes (“ _Pepper took me shopping,_ ” she’d said with a dreamy smile, “ _With no budget restriction. Speaking of budgets.._.” and with that she’d been back to business) and Phil seriously thinks this armchair, though tasteful and chic, is trying to eat him but he can’t quite work up the energy to retaliate. It’s not the state he would have liked any of the Avengers to find him in six months ago, but he likes to think he has their respect enough now to sink into the unholy, carnivorous armchair without losing face.

Though typically, it’s Stark who walks into the room, looking put out when he realises he hasn’t interrupted anything or been fortuitous enough to eavesdrop on classified intel. Dr. Banner is with him, following more sedately with his hands in his pockets. “Agents! Well,” Stark narrows his eyes at Darcy with a smirk, “Agent and Intern. Enjoying the first day of term?”

Darcy gamely ignores him, and Phil is pleased with her tact. She is, however, slipping her Louboutin’s back on. “I’ll make sure I update you on the progress to field status, Boss,” she tells him as she stands, and the casual tone gives it the implication that they’re talking about _her_ field status, not Hawkeye’s.

“Thank you, that’ll be all Miss. Lewis,” he dismisses her with a nod and she leaves with little fanfare.

When the first words out of Stark’s mouth aren’t about Clint, Phil knows he didn’t notice they were actually talking about his teammate.

Instead, “Word to the wise, Phil, sleeping with your assistant never ends well. Unless you’re Pepper and you make it end well through Pepper-like superpowers. And don’t sleep with Pepper either.”

He glares at Stark until the man holds up his hands in surrender and walks to the kitchen in a strategic retreat to retrieve coffee, all of which lets Phil know that Pepper definitely hasn’t told Stark about that one night in Washington DC after Stark appeared before the Defence Committee.

Undoubtedly for the best; it was a dinner with wine which turned into a rather enjoyable night for all concerned, but one they agreed never to repeat - and they haven’t, but she’s certainly the closest thing he has to a friend outside of SHIELD.

Dr. Banner just looks on mildly, though Phil can sense the semi-fond exasperation most people have when dealing with Tony Stark. “I have to make him eat now while he’s distractible otherwise he’ll keep going until dawn.”

“I heard that,” Stark calls from the kitchen. “But you do have a point. Hey, Phil, you want a sandwich?”

Phil figures why not, even Stark should be capable of sandwiches, “Sure.”

Stark’s flavour combinations leave much to be desired, but it certainly takes the edge off. Over the following half an hour, he, Stark and Banner exchange idle chat about the defensive shields they’re attempting to work on - “for the Tower and for the big guy here,” which prompts a rueful smile from Banner - and when they leave Phil feels he’s had enough of a break to dive back into his reports.

He doesn’t take any painkillers, and lets the armchair continue to devour him whole.

 

-

  

He reads the Avengers’ official reports first, since they’re the most immediately important. He pays close attention to Clint’s typical matter-of-fact details; his AARs have always been professional - and usually with a sardonic twist when things go as badly as he expected. Stark’s report is very casual, Banner’s sparse and Natasha’s contains all the pertinent details and observations - she’s more used to intelligence reports than after-actions. Rogers’ report contains all the justifications and evaluations Phil would expect, and yet it’s Clint’s blunt account which he re-reads.

_‘...Dir. Fury called me down from my observation post to report on activity surrounding the Tesseract which had, until that time, been in keeping with previous observations...’_

_‘...have given the Mission Psychologists a full account of my memories of the compromised time, and Dir. Fury received a detailed appraisal in person of all potential breaches of security arising from...’_

_‘...action of both the time-delay and impact-explosive arrow-heads to be quite satisfactory, but would recommend more than one grappling arrow-head to become standard in arsenal...’_

_‘...cessation of hostilities by the invading force, which manifested as them dropping down like puppets with cut strings...’_

_‘...shawarma.’_

When he’s on his fourth time through and acknowledges that he’s perhaps going a bit overboard, Phil reaches forward out of the cushioned grip of the armchair to turn on some mindless television.

It’s strange that in the field, he can stare at the same spot for hours, perfectly alert and ready. In those situations Clint is an asset, a tool, a co-worker and an agent but never a _distraction_ , even when he won’t shut up down the comms. With paperwork, his mind wanders all too easily without something to focus his distraction on.

He finds that Pepper has indeed filled the TiVo with re-runs of _Supernanny, Hoarders_ and _Trawlermen_ under Clint’s instruction. He smiles a little since there’s no-one but JARVIS to see him, and picks something at random. Phil settles back with a sigh at the pull of muscle over knitting bone, and switches folders on his Pad to read the official summaries sent out to the federal agencies across the globe.

 

-

  

Phil isn’t sure when he dozed off, but he wakes to the ding of the elevator doors opening. He moves to sit up and is brutally reminded that he last took painkillers at oh-eight-hundred; he checks his watch and finds he’s slept until nearly six PM.

The weird thing is that Rogers, when he rounds the corner into the living area and Phil’s line of sight, looks worse than Phil feels.

“Oh, hell,” Phil says lowly, sympathetically. He didn’t quite mean to say it, but he just has to accept at this point that his verbal filter has some sort of Cap-triggered off-switch.

Rogers actually smiles back, albeit very weakly. His shoulders are hunched and he looks thoroughly downtrodden. Phil supposes this is a little of how Rogers looked like before Dr. Erskine picked him out of the crowd, and he suddenly realises this is all _Steve_ \- it’s time he recognised the difference.

“I’d get us a drink,” Steve reaches the sofa opposite Phil and folds down onto it in a slouch. “But you’re medicated and I can’t even -”

Steve cuts off and looks so _sad_. When he rubs a hand tiredly across his face, Phil thinks that he looks like any other athletic twenty-something with relationship troubles.

“She told me not to come back. Talked about how pleased she was, showed me photos of her grandchildren and her wonderful life, about helping create SHIELD with Howard and Fury...”

Phil doesn’t know what to say, but he doubts Steve really wants his input anyway.

“And she doesn’t want me wallowing in the past, mine or hers,” he nods decisively like it was his decision, but he lets his head fall back against the sofa back and that illusion is shattered. “And I understand, believe me, I do. But is it wrong to want to cling to the one familiar thing, the one constant between the Steve Rogers from before, the Steve Rogers after and the Steve Rogers now?”

Steve’s wide eyes are imploring and Phil has always sucked at consolation. “It’s human nature to crave familiarity,” he offers eventually, “But hasn’t she always looked out for your best interests?” He knows enough to know that Peggy Carter was a badass with a heart of gold, and she’d had all the faith in the world in Steve. Phil likes to think he can relate.

When Steve smiles, it’s a little more genuine this time. “Yeah, except that time she shot at me.”

“I’ve heard that story,” admits Phil, unsure who he’s more embarrassed for: himself or Steve.

They spend a few moments in companionable silence, and it is only interrupted by the controlled hurricane that is Natasha as she strides purposefully in to grab a piece of fruit from the kitchen bowl. “Don’t mind me, boys,” she calls as she bites into the green apple and heads towards the suites, “I’m just changing for an assignment.”

“Anything fun?” Phil enquires, but Natasha will know he’s asking if it will be dangerous, if he should be concerned, if he should send back-up despite not being her handler right now. She’s in good hands with Sitwell, he assures himself.

Natasha stops and turns, offering up a delicate shrug. “Milk-run. Staking out a target at a museum function.”

“Ah,” Phil smiles and glances at Steve, trying to bring him into the conversation. He finds him watching the exchange intently. “An excuse for a pretty dress and the promise of violence?”

Her expression darkens for a moment into gleeful malice, “If I’m lucky. Steve, can you make sure he takes a painkiller with some food in the next half-hour?”

“Sure can,” Steve replies even as Phil puts up token (and somewhat false) protest. He’s actually pretty sore, but at least it isn’t anywhere near as bad as it was at two AM - he hopes that means he can start reducing his doses.

Natasha swans off to get ready, and Steve is already halfway to the kitchen, probably grateful of a simple distraction.

Phil’s living in a house full of highly-capable mother-hens.

 

-

 

Two weeks pass to the following pattern:

Phil sets his alarm for the oh-eight-hundred dose and takes it; he then spends an hour or so catching up on his emails and the headlines from the unholy comfort of his bed. (He wonders where Stark gets his mattresses, and desperately wants one for his own apartment.) After a shower, he usually meets Natasha in the kitchen, grabbing some fruit after her morning work-out as Phil fixes himself some breakfast. Darcy arrives at oh-ten-hundred for a morning meeting which can be anything from fifteen minutes to two hours.

Lunchtime is usually enough to drag Stark and Bruce from their labs, and Pepper has dropped by twice for lunch with the group. Natasha brings Clint with her from downstairs at the range and Steve returns from his morning classes in modern history, leading to an all-team lunch every day.

Clint speaks, but never directly to Phil; the only time Phil attempted to bridge the gap, he was ignored.

The afternoon sees everyone disperse again, and Phil has taken to heading down to the gym for something low impact for up to an hour. He doesn’t pretend to think Fury doesn’t know, but he’s not going to push his luck and delay his return to active duty by pushing too hard, too fast. He walks on the treadmill, he does some light yoga, and he’s noticed an improvement every day; it’s enough for now. Steve is usually there too, working out on one piece of equipment or another, but he and Phil rarely speak and Steve doesn’t do Phil the disservice of suggesting it’s too early or too much. Phil’s appreciative, even if he’s sure Steve is only there to keep an eye on him.

Besides lunch, he can count on his hands the number of times he’s seen Clint, and five times out of seven it’s when Phil has been relaxing with a book or some television in the living room (or even a movie marathon with Stark and Steve this Wednesday; _Star Wars_ was a big hit with the Cap). Clint had walked directly to the fridge, removed something, and walked out again towards his room.

The other two times have been: a chance meeting at the elevator, with muttered “excuse me”s from both parties as Clint entered and Phil exited; and yesterday, when Phil stayed in the gym longer than an hour and Clint arrived expecting the room to have been vacated. Even though Clint had done a textbook about-face and left immediately, Phil stayed an additional fifteen minutes out of pure spite.

Because despite Phil’s best intentions, despite his silent agreement to give Clint the space and time that he needs, and despite all common sense telling him not to antagonise a highly-trained operative, Phil is fucking sick of this pussyfooting around.

He’s not 100%, but he’s damn close and for two weeks out of the hospital, he’s doing remarkably well. The doctor is happy, Fury’s not unhappy at the very least, and Phil’s wondering just what medical marvels they’ve performed on him to make his recovery so swift. He has complete range of motion and he’s finished his antibiotic course; he’s is only taking his painkillers if he aches in the evenings and while that’s most evenings, it’s still a damn sight better than the first few days in the Tower.

Clint is being ridiculous, and Phil thinks he’s finally healthy enough to confront the other man about it on even ground.

He just has to time it right.

 

-

  

Darcy is as prompt as ever.

“It’s that time again, Boss,” she says in lieu of an hello when Phil lets her in. She doesn’t even look at him as she passes, which is why her face is such a picture when she turns. “Boss!” grins Darcy, one arm full of report folders and the other settling on her hip. “I’d almost forgotten what you looked like in a suit; lookin’ good!”

He smooths his hand down his tie and nods, not so much in agreement but more in approval; good, he thinks, I don’t look like I got stabbed clean through the chest six weeks ago. “I was making sure it still fits,” he quips, and Darcy narrows her eyes knowingly. “Do you have the forms?”

“Notification of return to active duty,” she hands over one of the many identical folders she’s carrying, and walks over to the breakfast bar to set down the others. “Everything else can wait until tomorrow.”

Phil flips open the beige, SHIELD-issue administration portfolio and scans the first page; Clint’s psychiatric evaluation summary is adorns the first page complete with the recommendation from Dr. Ashliyani that the archer be reinstated to _field-ready asset_ status; it’s countersigned by Fury, who either did so with painstaking deliberation, or he’d barely glanced at the form and signed whatever Percie had put in front of him.

Considering this was about Hawkeye, Phil suspects Fury knew damn well what he was signing - and what Phil was up to asking (through Darcy) to be the one to deliver it himself. The biggest give-away on that point is the post-it attached to the page - “ _I hate repeating myself, Phil._ ”

He refuses to flush or flinch. “Alright,” he says instead, steeling himself. “Where does Hawkeye’s schedule have him at 10am?”

Darcy’s eyes narrow. “You assume he’s sticking to a schedule?” Her tone doesn’t imply he’s wrong, just that she doesn’t know why Phil would presume. Darcy knows he and Clint have worked together for a long time, and maybe she understands their situation a little deeper than Phil would like simply because he’d asked for her help on this, but she doesn’t know, she doesn’t completely _get it_.

He knows Clint, inside and out, and he’s definitely sticking to a schedule. “Not an assumption,” is what he replies.

She grins, “He’s on the range, Boss.”

“Great,” he flips the folder closed and looks at his assistant pointedly. “ _Thank you_ , Darcy.”

She crosses her ankles, balancing perfectly on her heels as she shrugs. “No problem, Boss.”

He nods and turns towards the door and Darcy follows him out to the elevator. Natasha’s eyes follow them as they pass the breakfast bar where she’s sat with some fruit and a newspaper, but she makes no comment. There’s no wait, the Avengers’ elevator still here from Darcy’s arrival it would seem, and she takes the liberty of selecting floors zero and seven - her exit and his, respectively.

“I’m not going to ask you if you know what you’re doing, Boss,” she says as the doors close, “Because you always do. And I don’t know Hawkeye well enough to know just how bad it is.” She pointedly keeps staring straight ahead, though the mirroring makes this protective, defiant gesture moot. “But Natasha’s worried, and if Nat’s admitting that at all then something’s up worse than maybe we think.”

Phil considers ignoring her as the floor number flips from eight to seven, but he actually likes Darcy; she may make an exceptional agent one day, but for now she’s done a good job these last two weeks with his system, his moods and his work. He’s just thanked her for a personal favour, for her helpfulness, and he doesn’t want to sour the good rapport.

Instead, he meets her eyes in the back of the mirrored door, “I don’t need to see him to know he’s keeping a schedule. I don’t need to have spoken to him to know he’s in a bad way. But I’m his handler, and his oldest friend around here, and it’s the least I can do to push him back into the world.”

“And the rest?” She raises and eyebrow. Phil suspects she does _get it_ after all.

“And the rest,” he agrees. The doors open. “Good morning, Miss. Lewis,” he alights and turns to face her.

“See you later, Boss,” she nods.

 

-

  

The elevator opens up onto the gallery above a sunken range, soundproofed and apparently resistant to Stark’s repulsors, Natasha’s hand-guns and Clint’s variety of arrows. Even from his vantage point, Phil can’t see where the partition walls are able to rise from the floor and segment the range.

Clint has the full room open, all few hundred feet of it from below the elevator to a solid wall at the other end. One side of the room has resistant glass currently covered by alloy panels, and the artificial lights above almost completely disguise the moving, millimetre-wide target JARVIS controls on the distant wall. The archer is directly opposite him, and as he leases another arrow, he speaks, “I’ll be finished in an hour, sir.”

“I can wait,” Phil replies.

The archer’s head ducks, and though Phil can’t see for sure, he’d bet the archer was hiding a smile. “Soundproofed, sir.”

On second thought, he doesn’t sound as though he’s hiding a smile after all. Well, goddamn it. Phil glances around and spies the intercom, mentally cursing that he’s been put on the back foot by his own asset (an asset who isn’t responding as he’s used to) and that he forgot a key feature of the range. “An hour?” He says, hearing his voice amplified to the room below.

“Yes, sir,” Clint still has his back to Phil and isn’t making any movements to turn or leave. Well, if that’s the way he wants to play it, thinks Phil.

“I can wait,” he repeats.

And Clint makes him wait. Phil doesn’t take his eyes off the other man for a second, as he shoots arrow after hour, as JARVIS moves targets around the room. JARVIS even varies the targets, some flying mechanical bees released from a briefly-opening compartment, some data-entry ports appearing, cross-hairs moving rapidly and fitfully, and Clint has to switch heads just as deftly to deal with it all. It’s a training programme both Phil and Clint have dreamed of for the archer, but never had the means to achieve.

He watches Clint for the full hour Clint promised, and then watches as he retrieves every arrow from the floor and wall and re-sheathes them in his quiver. He knows Clint will spend time later, inspecting every shaft for damage and logging the performance of each trickhead; for now, Clint packs up silently and then, when the floor is clear, he takes the stairs up to the observation deck.

“Can I _help_ you, sir?” asks Clint bitchily, arms held carefully at his sides and his fist clenched. Phil doesn’t make the mistake of thinking it’s because Clint wants to hit him, and instead sees it as Clint desperately trying to stay still. If anything, the latter hurts more; Clint excels at being swift, silent and deadly - and as well he should - and to see him so undone means things are far worse than he realised..

It always gets worse.

Phil really ought to have gotten that by now.

“You can talk to me,” Phil wants to do this like the mature human being he is, but he’s realising how screwed up this all is and he’s angry at himself. He’s angry at Clint for avoiding him, and for avoiding his own problems, and he’s angry that Clint’s colossal guilt issues are going to tank them, tank the team, tank Clint if he’s not careful. “You can talk to me like a goddamn adult.”

“What did you just say?” Clint takes a step forward and his elbow flexes like he’s preparing for a punch but Phil knows, knows down to his soul that Clint won’t hurt him..

“You heard me. It’s time to cut this _silent treatment_ shit out.”

Clint smiles but there’s no humour there. “And that’s what I’ve been doing, is it?”

“Yes!” Phil replies explosively, and then sighs deeply. “Yes, Clint. That’s _exactly_ what you’ve been doing.”

“Right. You haven’t exactly gone out of your way to talk to me either, Coulson.” Clint turns away but he doesn’t head for the door. “How’s the shoulder?”

Phil doesn’t shrug - because he _can’t_ \- but his tone is enough of the verbal equivalent. He folds his arms instead. “Doc reckons I’ll be back on light duty next week.”

“No more two AM feedings, then,” Clint quips.

Phil raises an eyebrow, “Yeah, thanks for that.” With his back to Phil, Clint’s facial expression is a mystery, but he’s relaxing as they approach something close to their familiar rhythm. “You didn’t have to,” insists Phil, because he was fucked up and in pain, but he could have - would have - managed alone. He needs Clint to give up the easy going banter, though.

Clint turns quickly, “Yeah, I did, Coulson. It’s my fault you ended up in that state in the first place.”

And now, Phil thinks, we’re getting somewhere. “That responsibility hardly falls on you,” he says with purposeful flippancy.

The other man is anything but flippant, his voice low and expression dark. “It’s on me, Coulson. It’s _all_ on _me_.”

“You weren’t yourself, Clint.”

“He pulled out my humanity, and stuffed in his own brand of cruel,” Clint says viciously, advancing on Phil. “I _am_ responsible for every single life lost from the moment that sceptre touched my chest because he wouldn’t have made it out of the complex without me. And yeah, I count you in that, too.”

“I didn’t die,” Phil interrupted mildly.

“Not the fucking point,” spits the archer, “It wouldn’t have happened if I hadn’t been compromised, hadn’t had strings attached and danced to Loki’s tune. The things I did, Coulson, I did them without a single thought for anyone but him. I didn’t care; all that mattered was the objective. He left _Barton the Asset_ in my head, and all of the _World’s Greatest Marksman_ bullshit, and ripped out everything that makes me _me_ , Coulson, it wasn’t m-”

“That’s right,” Phil finally takes a step forward, scant millimetres from being nose-to-nose with Clint. “It wasn’t _you_. The Clint Barton in front of me is the same Clint Barton who got slapped on my desk as a last-ditch attempt on his way out of the door because he might be a great asset and the greatest marksman but he had an attitude problem. You’re the same Clint Barton who took a chance on his target rather than cut her down and lose all she knew and all she could do for us. And Clint?”

Clint, who had been staring intently at Phil’s tie pin, meets his handler’s eyes. “Yeah,” he acknowledges in a hoarse voice.

“You’re still the Clint Barton who I trust with my six; with my life. All of it,” he adds, chickening out at the last moment from adding ‘ _my heart_ ’. It’s just a bit too cheesy for him.

“I don’t,” Clint says brokenly, eyelashes fluttering as he blinks away the tears gathering. “I don’t trust him. Me. _Any of it_. Phil, I’ve _lost it_.”

He so rarely uses Phil’s given name that when he utters it - and with such heartbreak - Phil finally gives into his urge to pull Clint close and hug the living daylights out of him.

It doesn’t work out too badly though, because Clint clings back just as tightly, pressing his face into Phil’s collar.

“I was avoiding you,” he mumbles. “I can fake it like a pro with the others, but you and Nat... I betrayed you both. And Nat’s lost patience with me, you know how she hates dealing with the fallout.”

“You didn-”

“It felt like I did. And maybe I didn’t want to hear that I didn’t,” Clint reasons. “It remember every moment, so it still feels like it was me in there the whole time, doing whatever Loki wanted, twenty-four-seven... It was fucking hell, Phil.”

They stand in silence, Clint’s face hidden against Phil, arms curled tightly around Phil’s middle. Phil slides a hand up into the short hair at the back of Clint’s head and moves his fingertips in a feather-light massage. Their breathing synchronises, something which typically happens when Phil’s on comms. but feels natural here, pressed as they are chest-to-chest.

Time passes; Phil lets his eyes slide shut and savours the sensations and sounds.

“Can we get the fuck outta here?” Clint’s mouth moves against Phil’s shoulder, and Phil’s ruined too many suits in spectacular ways to be worried about a little spit. “I love to shoot as much as ever, but even I’m a little sick of the sight of this place.”

Phil nods and squeezes the back of Clint’s neck gently. As Clint pulls his head back, he’s smiling wryly, “You know our bullshit reasons for not doing ...this,” he punctuates with a quick tug of Phil’s hips into his. Neither of them are physically turned on by the moment, more emotional than lustful, but now Phil’s conscious of how close they are, how they fit remarkably well together, and how his doctor would kill him if he followed through on any of the other things he’s thinking of doing to Clint. “You know they haven’t gone away, right?”

“They weren’t bullshit. It’s just... we’re living in a different world,” Phil strokes his thumb over the pulse point in Clint’s neck. He’s not usually a man of many words, but this really needs it; he tries to find the right ones. “And the next time one of us is compromised or takes a hit in the line of duty,” he presses his lips chastely, quickly, to Clint’s and speaks against his mouth rather than pull away, “Then I’d rather have the memories of this than the fantasies of it.”

“Yeah,” Clint closes his eyes and kisses back, “I get it.”

 

-

 

-

 

_One week later..._

Clint barely sleeps. He keeps the same hours as Phil, curls around him on Phil’s good side for the entire night but invariably wakes at every shift in the night air. The archer may be in a bed, but he’s treating it like an op-nest.

Those are the good hours.

He works himself to exhaustion - Natasha is willing to spar with him again, as will Steve and Tony, and so with Phil and Bruce sit on the sidelines offering advice and a friendly chat it’s practically team bonding time; but when Clint’s not there he’s on the range or preparing tactical reports for other jobs. He never stops, and on the days where it’s particularly effective, Clint manages three hours of solid rest before the nightmares kick in.

Phil knows there’s nothing he can do. Clint is effective, solid and most importantly sane, but he’s not okay. Clint’s nowhere near ‘okay’, but he smiles more and means it most of the time; he offers his ridiculous commentary when they sit down to watch all three (“THERE CAN BE ONLY THREE,” insists Tony) Indiana Jones movies, distracts Steve from the similarities to Hydra. It’s painfully obvious to everyone what Clint’s trying to do, but Steve actually laughs at Henry Jones Sr.’s line about the dog at the end of Last Crusade, so they call that a win.

It’s what brings home that really, they’re all varying definitions of _not okay_. Steve still struggles with being a man out of time, thrust straight into the spotlight in a new century and no time to mourn or truly adjust. But Phil sees him spending more time with Tony, and with Darcy who takes him out and shows him the new New York.

Natasha is back at work, the Empress of bouncing back, but her edginess around Bruce is wearing off, and Phil hopes that the next time the Hulk makes an appearance, Tasha won’t slip back to square one.

Tony is, as ever, Tony; he’s sleeping less and working more, but Steve is a welcome distraction who has managed to find a space in the workshop to keep an eye on the genius, billionaire, playboy philanthropist who isn’t much of a playboy anymore but certainly lives up to the other monikers.

In the grand scheme of things, Phil thinks, they could be doing a lot worse; he could be dead, and though it’s a little selfish and arrogant, Phil thinks things would be _whole lot worse_ if he wasn’t here at all.

So he watches his team spar and gives constructive criticism until he’s well enough to jump in there himself; he gives Steve time and space and a friendly ear when he needs them and slips Darcy tidbits of Captain America’s past to make sure she knows who she’s dealing with - for better and for worse; he gives Tasha short side-missions and makes sure the team keeps Bruce on an even keel for now, even as Tony helps the scientist find that elusive balance; and for Clint, he’s there.

For Clint, he sleeps as deeply as he can, and doesn’t let go. For Clint, he keeps a supply of books, DVDs and music he’ll enjoy even though JARVIS can provide all he has and more, so that when Clint gets bored at oh-two-hundred there’s something other than ice-cold voids in his mind to concentrate on. For Clint, he’s alive and whole and healing; and for Clint he convinces them both that with Phil’s healing comes Clint’s.

They’re not okay. But they will be, eventually.


End file.
